IQ Wars Continue With Battles Over New Puzzles

A pioneering scholar poses more challenges to the validity of intelligence tests

Graham Turner, The Guardian

Spending so much of his life on the question of IQ "has been about as welcome as being drafted to help dig a gigantic hole to the center of the earth," writes James Flynn, a professor emeritus at New Zealand's U. of Otago.

Spending so much of his life on the question of IQ "has been about as welcome as being drafted to help dig a gigantic hole to the center of the earth," writes James Flynn, a professor emeritus at New Zealand's U. of Otago.

By Christopher Shea

James R. Flynn is an accidental IQ specialist. In the early
1980s, the American-born political scientist, a longtime New
Zealander, thought he might spend a few pages in a planned book on
"how to defend humane ideals" grappling with the argument that the
gap in IQ scores between blacks and whites was genetically
rooted.

It was not his first foray into that subject, but this time, as
he dug into international intelligence-test data, he came across a
puzzling trend: Although the tests